5of28Name:Arturo ArandaConviction: Shooting and killing a police officer in Laredo while hauling more than 500 pounds of marijuana on July 31, 1976.Arrived on death row: May 18, 1979Years awaiting execution: 38Photo: Texas DOCJ

6of28Name:Cesar FierroConviction: Killing and robbing a cab driver who was taking him from El Paso to Juarez on Feb. 27, 1979.Arrived on death row: Feb. 26, 1980
Years awaiting execution: 38Photo: TDCJ

7of28Name:Bobby MooreConviction: Shooting and killing James McCarble during a robbery in Houston on April 25, 1980.Arrived on death row: July 24, 1980
Years awaiting execution: 37Photo: HOGP

8of28Name:Arthur Williams
Conviction: Shot and killed police detective Daryl Wayne Shirley, who was serving a fugitive warrant on Williams on Aug. 28, 1982.
Arrived on death row: May 6, 1983Removed from death row in 2018. Photo: Texas DOCJ

23of28Name:Daryl Wheatfall
Conviction: The December 1990 killing of James Fitzgerald and L.B. Fitzgerald over a $50 debt in Houston. Arrived on death row: Jan. 28, 1992

Photo: Facebook

24of28Name: Brian Edward Davis
Conviction: The August 1991 murder of Alan Foster in Humble, Texas. Arrived on death row: July 17, 1992

25of28Name:William "Billy The Kid" Mason
Conviction: Beating his wife to death for playing her radio too loudly. Mason hogtied 33-year-old Deborah Ann Mason, put her in the trunk of a car and drove her to Humble where he bludgeoned her with a piece of concrete in January 1991.Arrived on death row: Aug. 12, 1992
Photo: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

26of28Name: Eugene Broxton
Conviction: The May 1991 robbery and murder of Sheila Dockens of Louisiana and attack on her husband inside a Channelview motel room. Arrived on death row: Sept. 18, 1992

Photo: Texas DOCJ

27of28Name: George McFarland
Conviction: The Nov. 15, 1991 robbery of Kenneth Kwan during a robbery in Houston. Arrived on death row: Sept. 29, 1992

Photo: Texas DOCJ

28of28Name:Rick Rhoades
Conviction: One day after being paroled, Sept. 13, 1991, Rhodes entered the home of two brothers while they slept, beat them with a steel bar and a stabbed them with a butcher knife. Arrived on death row: Dec. 31, 1992

Photo: WriteAPenPal.com, Texas DOCJ

DALLAS (AP) — Texas prisons will no longer allow clergy in the death chamber after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the scheduled execution of a man who argued his religious freedom would be violated if his Buddhist spiritual adviser couldn't accompany him.

Effective immediately, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will only permit prison security staff into the execution chamber, a spokesman said Wednesday. The policy change comes in response to the high court's ruling staying the execution of Patrick Murphy, a member of the "Texas 7" gang of escaped prisoners.

Texas previously allowed state-employed clergy to accompany inmates into the room where they'd be executed, but its prison staff included only Christian and Muslim clerics.

In light of this policy, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Texas couldn't move forward with Murphy's punishment unless his Buddhist adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the state's choosing accompanied him.

One of Murphy's lawyers, David Dow, said the policy change does not address their full legal argument and mistakes the main thrust of the court's decision.

"Their arbitrary and, at least for now, hostile response to all religion reveals a real need for close judicial oversight of the execution protocol," Dow said

Murphy's attorneys told the high court that executing him without his spiritual adviser in the room would violate the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. The 57-year-old — who was among a group of inmates who escaped from a Texas prison in 2000 and then committed numerous robberies, including one where a police officer was fatally shot — became a Buddhist while in prison nearly a decade ago.

In his concurring opinion, the court's newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that Texas had two options going forward: allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room, or allow religious advisers only in the viewing room, not the execution room.

"The government may not discriminate against religion generally or against particular religious denominations," Kavanaugh wrote.

Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, called the new policy "cruel and unusual," and urged the department to reconsider.

Prison chaplains will still be able to observe executions from a witness room and meet with inmates on death row beforehand, said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jeremy Desel. He declined to elaborate on the reasoning behind the policy change.

The change brings Texas in line with most other death penalty states, which do not allow clergy into the execution chamber, according to Robert Dunham, a lawyer and executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. But it is also likely to open new legal fights for America's busiest execution state, he said.

The policy change could be challenged as generally discriminating against religion and as retroactively targeting Murphy despite having a general formulation, Dunham said. If these arguments are presented to the high court, a ruling could have implications for how executions are conducted around the country, he said.

The Supreme Court's decision in Murphy's case followed a similar appeal in February, when the court ruled Alabama could execute a Muslim inmate without his Islamic spiritual adviser present in the execution chamber. The court decision that allowed Dominique Ray to be executed attracted public criticism , and Dunham said the ruling staying Murphy's execution might have been an effort by the justices to avoid further blowback.

"When you look at the court's order, they were hoping that Texas would give them a way out by accommodating Patrick Murphy's request," he said. "Texas has chosen not to do that, so it's likely that the ball with be back in the proverbial judicial court."